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Recent history
influenced U.S. foreign policy.}} The 21st century has been marked by growing and integration, with consequent increased risk to interlinked economies, as exemplified by the of the late 2000s and early 2010s; and by the expansion of communications with s and the , which have caused fundamental changes in business, politics, and individuals' personal lives, including the advent of platforms such as . The early 21st century saw escalating intra- and international strife in the Near East and Afghanistan, stimulated by vast economic disparities, by dissatisfaction with governments dominated by Western interests, by inter-ethnic and inter-sectarian feuds, and by the longest war in the history of the United States, the proximate cause for which was 's provocative of 's . and in , "The United States has become captive to a paradigm that ends up magnifying the very fears from which it was born.... One possible explanation for the resilience of the threat is that an overly approach aggravates the very conditions on which terrorist recruitment thrives. The destruction of entire cities and the unintentional killing of civilians, in addition to being tragic, serve as powerful propaganda tools for ists. Such incidents feed resentment, grievances, and ."}} The , a revolutionary wave of uprisings in North Africa and the Near East in the early 2010's, produced power vacuums that led to a resurgence of authoritarianism and the advent of reactionary groups like the . has become a leader in and .}} U.S. military involvements in the Near East and Afghanistan urges "a fundamental reassessment of US in those parts of the a time when US political elites... manifest... indifference to endless war when American wars continue as if on ." The public, writes Bacevich, needs to be informed that "the may not require... stationing... US troops in over 170 countries around the world, a massive military budget... or the continuous dropping of on targets in distant lands of marginal or nonexistent relevance to US's well-being."}}, along with a and resultant , have drained U.S. economic resources at a time when the U.S. and other Western countries are experiencing mounting socioeconomic dislocations aggravated by the of work and the . writes that "the West is beset by deep , reinforced in recent decades by poorly managed ." He urges the necessity of giving a humane face to the embrace of globalization and ..."}} , which had been proposed in Sir 's (1516) and in 's (1797). The proposals' purposes and prospects are discussed in , "Born to Be Free" (review of and Yannick Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, , 2017), , vol. LXIV, no. 15 (12 October 2017), pp. 39–41.}} in the United States, of perhaps $1,000 a month per individual, would automatically provide a modest for everyone who could become redundant in the due to or – without the current cumbersome, often demeaning mechanisms for and beneficiary supervision. UBI would create, for many persons, life choices not now available to them, and might reduce spawned by desperate living conditions. UBI's supporters have included politicians across the political spectrum such as , , , , and .}} Meanwhile, ancient and populous Asian civilizations, namely and especially , have been emerging from centuries of relative scientific, technological, and economic dormancy to become potential economic and political rivals for Western powers. Worldwide for has risen due to growing populations and industrialization, especially in India, China, and Brazil. .}} The increased demand is contributing to increased and . That, and a need for safe, reliable energy supplies independent of politically volatile regions, has spurred the development of sources of , chiefly and , in place of the "fissile-fossil complex" of and -based energy ( , , ). In recognition of the posed by , and , their remedies, and the broader, growing matergetic crisis facing Earth were fairly comprehensively discussed in the December 1970 "Biosphere" issue.}} ", substantially responsible for Earth's , was first described in 1824 by the French mathematician . The greenhouse effect is a natural mechanism that becomes dangerous if the 's concentrations exceed environmentally safe levels, as they have gradually been doing since the start of the . As predicted, this is already increasing the frequency and severity of s and s due to accelerated melting of s, s, and s; flooding of low-lying s; s; disruption and s; displacements; with havoc to marine life; release, from thawing , of , a greenhouse gas more powerful than ; and intra- and intersocietal , with increased and . The multifarious, irreversible damage from global warming will accelerate as environmental are reached. The late – on 2 July 2017, belatedly celebrating his 75th birthday, warned that is rapidly approaching an irreversible that will leave the planet with an uninhabitable environment like that of , with a temperature of 250 degrees and . The are already forced to factor global-warming effects into their planning for military , war, and .}} in December 2015 195 countries signed the , though in 2017 President announced his withdrawal of the United States from the Agreement. published a stating that, if drastic changes in the global base and lifestyle are not made by about 2030—within a dozen years—civilization on planet Earth will become unsalvageable.}} , writing in , contemplates the evolution of the infrastructure that made the history of the world possible, and concludes that "we are probably the only intelligent life in the galaxy.... And if our planet is so special, it becomes all the more important to preserve this unique world for ourselves, our descendants and the many creatures that call Earth home." He explains that the 's first s after the , 13 billion years ago, could not have had planets because heavier than and had not yet been cooked up inside stars. By the time our star, the , came into being 4.5 billion years ago, there were sufficient amounts of heavier elements available to form . The Sun resides within a fairly narrow "galactic habitable zone" that is at reduced risk from destructive e and s. An orderly arrangement of s in nearly circular s providing long-term stability – as in our – is uncommon. "Earth-like planets" that have been discovered are generally uninhabitable, by contrast with Earth with its thin mobile crust where activity brings s and nutrients to the surface through . Earth also has a large lic core that, coupled with Earth's rapid rotation, produces a strong that shields Earth from harmful ; without this screen, "our atomosphere would probably erode, and any living thing on the surface would get fried." These planetary attributes are diredtly related to our , which probably formed early in the solar system's history when a -size object struck the nascent Earth a glancing blow, causing both s to melt; the metallic material from the two objects settled into Earth's center, and much of Earth's original lighter rocky material splashed out to become the Moon, leaving Earth with a thinner crust. Without that impact, Earth would lack its crucial magnetic field and plate tectonics. The presence of such a large Moon stabilizes Earth, preventing it from toppling far from the vertical, as happened with Mars. Once the Earth-Moon system settled down, "life emerged with almost indecent rapidity": s of single-celled s have been found in rocks 3.4 billion years old – about a billion years younger than Earth. But it was only about 1.5 billion years ago that more complex, cells, the stuff of all plants and animals, arose from a single merging of two types of primordial single-celled organisms: and . "It is a measure of how unlikely such a single fusion of cells was that it took two billion years of to occur." Even then, little changed for about a billion years, apart from early eukaryotes forming flat, soft-bodied multicellular organisms, until the some 550 million years ago. , showing extremely close similarities among the most diverse human populations, indicates that all humans are descended from a tiny population, possibly survivors of some catastrophe or catastrophes. DNA evidence pinpoints two s: 150,000 years ago, the human population was reduced to no more than a few thousand breeding pairs; and about 70,000 years ago, the entire human population fell to about 1,000. "Is life likely to exist elsewhere in the galaxy?" asks John Gribbin. "Almost certainly, given the speed with which it appeared on Earth. Is another likely to exist today? Almost certainly no, given the chain of circumstances that led to our existence."}} concludes an article on "The Suffocation of Democracy": "Within several decades after 's presidency has ended, the looming effects of due to human-caused —which Trump not only denies but is doing so much to accelerate—will be inescapable. of continental interiors, of populous coastal areas, and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, with concomitant shortages of fresh water and food, will set in motion both population flight and conflicts over scarce resources that dwarf the current fate of and . No wall will be high enough to shelter the US from these events....".}} explains that the 2018 Special Report understates the climatic perils to Earth and adds: "Engineers have made remarkable advances, and the price of energy generated by the sun or wind has continued to plunge... these are now the cheapest sources of power across much of the globe. Battery storage technology has progressed too; the fact that the sun goes down at night is no longer the obstacle to many once presumed.... , the planet's fifth-largest economy, promises to be by 2045.... The paramount reason we didn't heed... earlier warnings is the power of the .... But the relentless floods and storms and fires have gotten Americans' attention... 93 percent of want more ; so do 84 percent of .... In October 2017 the York State attorney general...filed suit against , claiming the company defrauded shareholders by downplaying the risks of climate change. In January 2018 New York City joined the growing campaign... Mayor is working with London's mayor, , to convince their colleagues around the world to do likewise. In July 2018 Ireland became the first nation to join the campaign... This kind of pressure on fossil-fuel investors needs to continue..."}} ’s , released on November 23, 2018, describes the horrific prospects for the “U.S. economy, human health, and the environment” if emissions of are not curtailed substantially on an urgent basis.}} sees encouraging signs of progress in the worldwide campaign to replace the fissile-fossil complex with , direct and indirect ( ). "Over the last decade, there has been a staggering fall in the price of solar and wind power, and of the used to store energy.... Who is going to invest in fossil-fuel industry that is clearly destined to shrink?... Petroleum's price should fall if it has to compete with the price of .... The world's largest private-sector coal-mining company, [Peabody, went from the list of most prosperous U.S. corporations] to bankruptcy in 2016.... Over the first nine months of 2018, installed forty times more capacity for than for coal-fired power.... Even "cheap" is... starting to look expensive compared to... sun, wind, and batteries.... Once-powerful become "a -reliant basket case" in 2018 was dropped from the Dow Industrial Index... The world's leading have become convinced that s will account for all the growth in demand by the early 2020s.... An effort... launched in 2012 to persuade universities and churches to their fossil fuel shares has... become the largest divestment campaign in history.... Countries in and have an opportunity to avoid expensive s in and centralized grids by adopting mini-grids and decentralized solar and wind energy deployed off-grid – just as they jumped straight to s and obviated the need to lay expensive copper-wired s.... Imagine a world in which the tortured politics of the weren't magnified in importance by the value of the hydrocarbons beneath its sands.... The question, of course, is whether we can reach that new world in time."}} International tensions were heightened in connection with the efforts of some to induce to give up its , and to prevent from developing nuclear weapons. writes: "The quest for , like the struggle to arrest , requires that we think of ourselves not just as s, s, or s, but as the human inhabitants of a shared space."}} In May 2019 a released a stating that, due to human activities excessively focused on , a million of 's and are at imminent risk of , which will wreak havoc with the planet's and capacity to feed the world's . Notes Category:Recent history